Lesson from steve jobs

 The death of Steve Jobs socked the world as he was
considered one of the world's most innovative
men. Under his leadership, Apple has never been
short of creating beautifully designed products
that has wowed the world and also becoming of
the world's most valuable company (US $341
Billion as of 10 August 2011).
 When I first heard the news that he passed away,
in my mind I was asking my friends, "Are you
kidding?" A quick search on the Internet yielded
much talk about his demise and even apple
website created a webpage for him.
 Here are some life lessons that I have personally
learnt from him

Steve Jobs was born out of wedlock and put up
for adoption for birth. In fact, he mentioned in
one of his talks that he was so poor that he had
to sleep in the floor of friends' rooms during his
college days. In addition, he earned little
money for food after returning Coke bottles.
Furthermore, he had to walk seven miles every
week across town to the Hare Krishna temple
for the Sunday feast. If such a person like Steve
Jobs could face adversity and still make it in
society, what is our excuse?

For the man who ran the most valuable company in the
world, interestingly, he actually did not finish his
degree education. In fact, he dropped out of Reed
College after only one semester.
Steve mentioned that his short stint in college was an
impactful one because "If I had never dropped in on
that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac
would have never had multiple typefaces or
proportionally spaced fonts."
A little known fact about Steve Jobs was the fact that
he was listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor
in 338 US patents or patent applications related to a
range of technologies from actual computer and
portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-
based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters,

The experiences faced by Steve were also rather
dramatic and could be a potential storyline of a
soap opera. In 1985, two years after recruiting
Apple's new CEO, John Sculley, Jobs was literally
kicked out of the company out of the company he
founded. This was due to deterioration in Job's
working relationship with Scully and resulted in
an internal power struggle that Jobs lost. However,
Jobs claimed that being fired from Apple was the
best thing that could have happened to him. He
said, "The heaviness of being successful was
replaced by the lightness of being a beginner
again, less sure about everything. It freed me to
enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

The time away from Apple also gave Jobs time to
start a new company called NeXT, which was
to develop high-end computers at expensive
prices. The company did not do so well in sales
but it influenced future software
developments, particularly the MAC OS X. In
1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group from
Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the
price of $10 million. The company decided that
it would give up selling its unprofitable Pixar
Image .Computer and concentrate its efforts
into computer-animated films. This company
was later renamed as Pixar.

Pixar's partnership with Disney was a
commercial success and it bought many great
films such as Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story
2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The
Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-E and Toy
Story 3. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles,
Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 each
received the Academy Award for Best
Animated Feature. None of this would have
happened if he were not fired from Apple.

When he was much younger at the age of 17, he
read a quote which affected him a lot, "If you
live each day as if it was your last, someday
you'll most certainly be right." Since then for
the past 33 years, Jobs looked into his mirror
every day of his life to ask, "If today were the
last day of my life, would I want to do what I
am about to do today?" If the answer has been
"No" for too many days in a row, he knew that
he needed to change something.

He also mentions in his address to Stanford
students in 2005, "Because almost everything –
all external expectations, all pride, all fear of
embarrassment or failure - these things just fall
away in the face of death, leaving only what is
truly important. Remembering that you are
going to die is the best way I know to avoid the
trap of thinking you have something to lose.
You are already naked. There is no reason not
to follow your heart."

Jobs also reminded them that "Your time is
limited, so don't waste it living someone else's
life" and"have the courage to follow your heart
and intuition.“ We are constantly being
surrounded by people telling us what to do
with our lives and also we may also at times in
our lives, want to live the lives of other people.
Live a life that you really want and have
courage to live it.

Jobs reminds us to connect the dots in life.
Every thing that has happened in our lives
happened for a reason. We have to "trust that
the dots will somehow connect in your future."
Perhaps you have gone through many things in
life and wondered why it had to happen? It
could be repeating another semester in school,
studying the wrong course, wasting 3 years in
a company that didn't improve your career or
getting a lousy boss that treated you like dirt.
All these 'negative' incidents in your life could
actually be the turning point of your life from
that point on!

 It is my firm belief that every thing that happens to
us right now is to prepare us for the future. In one
of my blog articles, I mentioned about how at the
age of 17, I started off as a volunteer of a youth
organisation and did a lot of program planning
and emceeing. I wouldn't dare to say that every
program I ran was incredibly successful but learnt
a lot from the ones that failed or didn't generate
interest from participants. Later did I know that all
these were necessary to prepare me for the role as
a trainer and then much later to transit into being a
public speaker.
 Everything happens for a reason, the only thing we
need to do in our lives is to make sense out of our
experiences and try to connect the dots.

Steve Jobs was one of the few people that didn't really
believe in focus groups. This was contrary to most
business philosophies that you had to ask people on
what they wanted in their products.
"None. It's not the consumers' job to know what they
want." - Jobs responding to whether he did market
research for the iPad.
However, most people in life don't know what they want,
especially if they have never seen it or even
conceptualised a new product before. Steve relied a lot
on his intuition about how people liked things and the
way they operated them. This sense of intuition that he
had was really ahead of his time as he could see into
the future and helped created demand for products
that were in his head.

For example, before the launch of iPad, most
people were skeptical of Apple's ability to
compete in the market and its lack of
experience in producing such devices. Even the
internet was flooded with comments on the
name of the iPad. However, when it was
launched, it created a storm of people who
wanted to own a piece of it. It was one of the
best selling products Apple has ever created
and is believed to dominate the market share
for the next 5 years.

 In most of the Macworld keynotes of Steve Jobs, I recall
watching many times where Jobs will usually ask
everyone in the hall to give a huge round of applause
for his staff who has worked so hard to make things
happen. He even thank their families, loved ones,
spouses, partners for being there to support his staff in
their work.
 In a lot of the team building activities that I run with
my corporate clients, I ask members of the team to
publicly acknowledge and give each other praise. This
meaningful activity has helped team members to
express what they always wanted to say but yet have
no opportunity for it. This also created a moment
where some people actually cried and hugged each
other. It created a sense of belonging and appreciation
for the work that they have done

Steve has always showed passion in what he
does. In all his keynotes, he always talks about
Apples products and "hopes that you will love
it as much as we do". You realise that they are
not sharing just a product, but a labour of love
that resulted in a product.

 "I want to put a ding in the universe." - Steve
Jobs "People sometimes have goals in life. Steve
Jobs exceeded every goal he ever set for
himself." - Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder,
on Steve Jobs

"Here's to the crazy ones,
the misfits, the rebels, the trouble makers,
the round pegs in square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules,
and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify
them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them,
because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they
can change the world,
are the ones who do."

 Apple's 1997 'Think Different' ad
 I believed that Steve completely managed to
fulfill his wish of changing the world. Many of
us today are living so much differently with
how much he influenced society with its
gadgets.My question to you is whether you
have found your purpose in living and made
up your mind tochange the world. Well, if you
think you are crazy enough to think you can,
you might just be the one to do it.
 Change the world, one step at a time.

Lesson from steve jobs

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